Malawi’s export base is dominated by tobacco, accounting for over 60% of export earnings. This is precarious given the falling tobacco prices and the tobacco industry in general due to the anti-smoking campaign. Diversification of the export base is therefore a requirement for achieving structural transformation and economic growth in Malawi. In this essay, I focus on one aspect of export diversification, i.e., diversification into high value semi-perennial grains especially pigeon peas. The demand for pigeon peas has been rising over the past decade especially to India and other Asian countries. Pigeon peas are mostly grown in the southern parts of Malawi but there are serious challenges for expansion in those locations due to smaller farm sizes. In the central region however, there are opportunities for expansion given the existence of larger farms, and agroecological suitability of the pigeon peas. The challenge however is that pigeon peas are semi-perennial and coincidentally social norms in the central region are that livestock are left on free range in the dry season thus could damage the pigeon peas.
This essay deals with differences in livestock keeping systems (especially goats) and their ramifications for cropping patterns (especially pigeon peas) observed across locations and seasons in Malawi. During the wet or rainy season, all goats are either tethered or controlled. This is to avoid destroying crops in the fields. During the dry season (June-October) however, goats in most of central region roam around in free range keeping system. One easily observes these goats on roads, thereby posing a threat to road accidents. Conversely, goats are mostly tethered or controlled even in the dry season in the southern parts of the country. One also observes a glaring difference in the cropping systems during the dry season months (see table 1). In the central region parts of the country, most land is uncultivated and left bare except in wetlands (also known as dambo) or under irrigation. For wetlands and irrigated plots, one observes that few farmers who attempt to grow crops during the dry season in the central region parts of the country construct fences to avoid the crops from being destroyed by goats. In the southern parts of the country, however, crops especially pigeon peas and cassava are still in the plots throughout the dry season. And these crops are unfenced. Given the increasing export demand of these crops (especially pigeon peas demand from India) and the agroecological benefits of having a cover crop in dry season months, it is imperative to understand whether changing the local governance of goat keeping systems especially in the central region can lead to agroecological transformation in the region and economic growth in Malawi.
This problem is essentially a Coase problem. In describing the problem of social cost, Ronald Coase, a 1991 Nobel prize winning economist, presented an example of a cattle owner whose cattle strays to destroy crops on neighboring land (Coase 1960). While Coase’s case study is thought of as a micro or local level issue, in this instance, the whole industry (goat industry) is affecting the cropping industry and all the associated backward and forward linkages. While these externalities are not usually studied in macroeconomics, they can have amplified macroeconomic impacts especially in developing countries where crop and livestock systems co-exist within the same locations. In historical context, a simple change in property rights led to industrial revolution in Britiain and in nineteenth century US, adoption of barbed wire allowed farmers to grow crops with substantial impacts on agricultural development (Hornbeck 2010). Understanding the production networks around crop and livestock systems and their macroeconomic impacts especially during drought years is therefore important. In addition, the crop-livestock externalities as production networks present a case of how local institutions can have impacts on structural transformation and economic growth.
Malawi’s agricultural policies are collectively guided by the 2016 National Agricultural Policy which is currently under revision while the livestock sub-sector is also supplemented with sub-sector level policy documents. Some crops of strategic importance like cotton and tobacco are also guided by legal instruments in the Special Crops Act while the rest of the agricultural sector is legally guided by the Agriculture (General Purposes) Act and Control of Goods Act (Comstock et al 2019). Nonetheless, there are neither national policies nor legal instruments regulating the crop-livestock trade-offs especially on who is liable if livestock destroy other people’s crops. While this may be interpreted in the courts using acts related to property ownership, the formal legal framework is unknown. Unwritten and informal community norms which vary across space and time are the ones that guide the compensatory actions. These community norms however can either foster or deter adoption of agroecologically sustainable methods of farming. The history of agricultural policy since the colonial times in Malawi has shown that coercion through formal regulations does not result in soil and water conservation as is planned (see Mulwafu 2010, and McCracken 2012). In terms of historical legal instruments, Malawi as a British protectorate might have followed the English common law which would subscribe liability to the livestock owner to fence in the animals. While there are no national policies and no legal instruments on open ranging of livestock, the literature has demonstrated that these types of conflicts are best dealt at local level and using alternative means like technological change (e.g., invention of barbed wire) rather than formal legal reforms (Hornbeck 2010).
The literature on pigeon-pea integration in maize farming systems has recently identified livestock damage as one of the leading factors for lack of adoption of perennial grains (especially pigeon peas) in the central region parts of the country. Several studies (e.g.,Roge et al. (2016), Peter et al. (2017), and Zulu et al (2018)) have observed that in southern Malawi unlike in northern and central region, community norms ensure year-round control of livestock which allows survival of pigeon peas. Specifically, Zulu et al. (2018) provides a detailed qualitative analysis of the differences in livestock management approaches for preventing livestock from damaging pigeon peas. These include individual household based, chief-based system, and community-based system. They noted that the community-based system worked effectively at ensuring that pigeon-peas are cultivated, and livestock are controlled. Though this property or liability right has been neglected in the policy and formal legal spaces, the mega trends of climate change, urbanization, and increase land pressures due to population growth all point to a future of increased conflicts.
Given the nature of the problem, central government policy through legislation is most likely to backfire. A policy that would work is one that is democratic and allows institutions to develop endogenously without external influence. The central government and its partners can nonetheless change the nature of the incentives. Nudging farmers to set community norms that are optimal in the economic and agroecological sense has important ramifications for structural transformation and economic growth in Malawi. Policy change that builds on the existing local governance structures can lead to substantial gains to Malawi’s export earnings and nutritional goals with increased goats’ production. This nudging for local governance by changing the incentives for growing pigeon peas and confining livestock will affect over 1 million smallholder farmers who would grow pigeon peas as well as grow crops in irrigation schemes without getting worried of livestock damage. At the same time, such policy will result in less risks of road accidents and theft.
Solutions to dealing with the problem revolve around resolving the trade-offs in the use of labor for either fencing on the part of the pigeon pea farmer or for accessing feed on the part of the livestock owner. In addition, it requires one to make assumptions about access to livestock feed and output markets. Therefore, instead of broadly introducing pigeon peas across the whole central region, it would be prudent to target locations where it is agroecologically most suitable to grow pigeon peas. Then, provide incentives for all goat owners within such location by providing training in modern goat house (khola) construction and feed preservation. Improving access to non-wood materials (e.g., wire) for making the khola is a good strategy to incentivising the controlled systems in central region. Also providing predictable output market access for the pigeon peas either in the form of contract farming or some form of certification for adhering to socially acceptable community norms. In addition, varietal developments in adaptable short duration pigeon peas can help in getting win-win solutions as such government needs to invest in directed research towards varietal development. Given the mega trends of climate change, population growth leading to land pressures, increased pigeon pea export demand and increased goat demand due to urbanization; the community norms will be tested continuously. As such it would be prudent to start a formal legal reform process by reviewing the laws and instituting more studies to understand these community norms. These solutions represent indirect payments to agro-ecosystem services that are provided to avoid livestock damage while allowing for local governance structures to operate normally. The nudging programs do not have to target all potential pigeon pea farmers or goat owners. A critical mass of either is enough to tilt the incentives towards local governance structures that are more efficient economically and for the environment.
Such programs would be best implemented by NGOs, development partner funded projects, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. The key to implementation of such incentive schemes is to avoid introducing any formal rules on open or close ranging. Let the communities themselves see the benefits of establishing property rights governance that is best suited for the location. This type of a program would require piloting probably through randomized control trials (RCTs) in locations where it is agronomically and economically viable to expand pigeon pea production.
Feed availability especially during drought years may be a limiting factor to evolution of community norms for close range goat farming. That is, even if the pigeon pea farmers are in majority, the lack of feed for the increasing number of goats given the demands for meat in urban areas will result in a conflict for use of wetlands. This will especially be the case because the wetlands are also mostly being converted for small scale groundwater irrigation. Thus, establishing a market for feed and providing training for feed formulation that reduces the wastage of feed due to poor handling can lessen the nature of conflicts. Though plausible and implementable, the set of solutions proposed may face several challenges. First, the countervailing political power held in traditional leaders who are mostly elites in the villages and tend to own large numbers of livestock. For them, access to other farmers’ crop plots is a good source of feed during the dry season. Second, though growing of perennial grains is agroecologically superior to leaving the ground bare; on the same agroecology basis, other scholars argue that confining animals either by tethering or in pens is tantamount to imprisoning the animals and a neglect of “animal welfare”. It is even argued that such tethering systems lead to concentrated ticks’ infestation due to wounds that inevitably develop on the animal’s body. With these reasons, it is potentially easy to dismiss any attempt to introduce close range systems across the whole country as a form of tilting the local structures and advancing “crop welfare” at the expense of “animal welfare”. Nonetheless, substantial research is required to consider the equilibrium displacement and production networks consequences of such governance structures. For instance, the increased supply of pigeon peas would possibly increase livestock feed and would be a good source of firewood that would help in reducing deforestation. At the same time, the requirement of goat owners to feed the goats would mean labor reallocation from either leisure or other economic activities that need to be considered.
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